Allocating pollution costs using noise equivalency factors

Noise pollution associated with roadway traffic and methods of reducing its negative impacts has been a research issue for over 30 years. One of the more popular approaches to reducing noise pollution has been to install noise barriers along the sections of roadway where noise levels exceed some acceptable standard. The cost of these barriers, however, is usually borne by the transportation authorities and not those who directly cause the problem. With the advent of ITS, and electronic toll pricing in particular, there exists a unique opportunity to recover the costs of noise pollution directly from the people who produce it. The focus of this paper will be to identify methods by which the financial cost of noise pollution may be equitably allocated to those vehicles that cause the noise. The first section of the paper will briefly examine different types of cost allocation methodologies. Subsequently, the methods by which noise pollution is quantified and predicted will be explored and discussed. The concept of noise equivalency factors will be introduced and used to calculate a responsibility measure for different vehicle classes. Lastly, a simple example will be used to outline the concepts developed in the paper.